rit, watching the bright
waters with eyes that ached with the intensity of the vigil, and Dupre
hunted in the forest and over the sand dunes, among the high meadows
that broke the heavy woods in this region, and down along the reaches of
the water.

"Farther with each day!" thought Maren to herself. "Holy Mother, send
the brigade!"

And Dupre echoed the thought in sadness of soul.

"More pain for her heart in each hour's delay. Would the trial were
done!"

About three of the clock on the first day of waiting there came sounds
of singing and a string of canoes rounded a bend of the shore at the
south.

"M'sieu!" cried Maren swiftly; "who comes?"

Dupre, tinkering at the canoe overturned on the pebbly beach,
straightened and looked in the direction she indicated.

He looked long with hand to eye, and presently turned quietly.

"Nor'westers, I think, Ma'amselle. They come from Fort William to the
Wilderness."

Fort William!

Back along the trail went memory with mention of the post on the distant
shore of Lake Superior. How oft had she peeped with fascinated eyes from
behind her father's forge at sturdy men in buckskins who spoke with the
blacksmith about the wonders of the country of the Red River, and they
had come from Fort William. She saw again the bustle and activity of
Grand Portage, the comfortable house of the Baptistes. Once more she
felt the old yearning for the unknown.

And this was it,--this gleaming stretch of inland sea, one man who stood
by her and another who betrayed her with a kiss, yet who drew her after
him as the helpless leaf, fallen to the stream, is whirled into the
white destruction of the rapids.

Aye, verily, this was the unknown.

She was looking down the lake with the sun on her uncovered head, on the
soft whiteness of the doeskin garment, and to young Dupre she had never
seemed so near the divine, so far and unattainable.

"Ma'amselle," he said presently, "if these newcomers speak us, heed you
not what I may say. There are times in the open ways when a man must lie
for the good of himself--or others."

The girl turned her eyes from the canoes, some twenty of them, to his
face. It was grave and quiet.

"Assuredly," she said after a moment's scrutiny. "Had I best hide in the
bushes, M'sieu?"

"No, they have seen us."

Sweeping forward, the brigade of the Nor'westers, for such it proved to
be, headed near in a circle and the head canoe turned in to shore.

"Friend?" c